Well with my main genre (cosy murder mystery) I'm still half thinking of going the traditional route. I'm not quite sure if my last novel gets across the line in terms of quality. I like it, but it was a Nano novel so isn't super long. Still it's quite a neat little mystery in the Agatha Christie vein. But in your case I would definitely take up that offer. The erotic thing - ironically my fifth book written but first published - started out as a joke for old school friends. A lot of characters in it are based on people we know and there are loads of references. I think because I had friends interested in it, it gave me the motivation to finish it. It also didn't really end up that erotic. I found that when push came to shove, I actually couldn't bring myself to type a word for the male member. So basically the sex scenes are as though they were written by Sister Vanilla the Trappist nun. Anyway I have one more erotic romance idea that may end up as a novella, not sure yet, and after that I think I'll stick with murder mystery. I did print a sample of novel three via Lulu (but it's not publicly accessible and still needs a ton of work). It is super, super exciting seeing your own work in "book" form.
I went manuscripts. 'cuz people aren't used to seeing them, and because I'm used to working with scripts, so big slabs of tree with words in them are kind of my comfort zone. Printed out three copies double-sided to mail and one single-sided to keep. Then had to haul them in a backpack seven miles. Nice that we've managed to negotiate a killer discount at Office Depot; I watched the price drop from $250 to $30 as I walked out with like eight reams of paper (printed some stuff for my wife, too). Remember - 50 shades started life as Twilight slash fic. There's gold in them thar hills.
Curious, and this might be TMI or too personal for you, but do you use words for it when you're in the act yourself? Is it just the act of putting it on the page that's too much?I found that when push came to shove, I actually couldn't bring myself to type a word for the male member
That's hilarious. Man, it's way too easy to hear the wrong thing in that circumstance. Everyone's voice is quieter, and their hearing is not so good, in my experience. There's nothing that can take you out of the moment quite like when you say something and your partner responds with "What?"
Oh gosh. I've done this but I forgot to say the word cock. Legit. I don't know what I was planning to say when I started speaking but I most certainly did not love him. It came out as an "ohhhh fuck I love......" and then there were no words to complete that sentence. Or there were too many words. I don't know. Luckily, he knew exactly where I was and didn't make a big deal about it at the time. He just slowed down and made me beg. He really enjoyed fucking with me when my senses were overloaded. We laughed about it later - he would randomly bring it up, saying, "So, I've been wondering what you love." Every time I would stutter trying to explain myself before realizing he was just fucking with me again.
I KNEW that this had to have happened to more people than me. It's just, like, when you get in that moment where you're likely to say you love someone's cock, you're likely to be in the heat of things, and there's thrusting, and sometimes thrusts cut off the end of your sentence for you.